Alivardi Khan
Nawab of Bengal
Alivardi Khan (Bengali: আলীবর্দী খাঁ, Bengali pronunciation: [alibordi kʰã]; 1676 – 9 April 1756) was the fourth Nawab of Bengal from 1740 to 1756. He toppled the Nasiri dynasty of Nawabs by defeating Sarfaraz Khan in 1740 and assumed power himself.
During much of his reign Alivardi encountered frequent Maratha raids under Raghoji Bhonsle, culminating in the surrender of the province of Orissa in a peace settlement in 1751. He also faced separatist rebellions in Bihar as well as a revolt from his grandson Siraj ud-Daulah, though these were suppressed.
Alivardi spent the latter part of his reign rebuilding Bengal. He was a patron of the arts and resumed the policies of Murshid Quli Khan. He maintained a politically neutral stance with the European powers in the subcontinent and prevented any infighting amongst them in his dominions. He was succeeded by Siraj ud-Daulah in 1756.
Early life
Originally Mirza Bande or Mirza Muhammad Ali, Alivardi was a native of the Deccan who was born in 1676. His father Mirza Muhammad Madani, who was of Arab descent, was the son of a foster-brother of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb; Madani himself began his career as a cup-bearer under the latter's son Azam Shah.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alivardi Khan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.